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Sycamores — Part 1

The buds of the sycamore deserve our close attention in the autumn. Leaves are fading; at first glance we note that there are no buds in their angles. How is next year's growth provided for? Look again! The leaf loosens in your hand and lets go its hold on the twig. Its stem ends in a hollow cone. There on the twig is a plump bud that grew all summer under the protecting base of that leaf. Two or three little hoods each bud wears to protect it, now the leaf is gone. The outer one is of leathery texture, without seams, and the delicate inner ones fit close, so there is no danger. The leaf never abandons its ward until it is safe to do so.

The little frilled sheathing stipules are well worth looking for on young shoots of the sycamore in spring. So are the balls that hang in the treetop, first in May as the two separate kinds of flower heads; later when the surviving pistillate ones change to hard brown seed balls, banging against neighbouring limbs until the flexible stems are worn to shreds, and the pointed seeds are loosened and wafted away on their hairy parachutes. Most of the seeds die, of course, but Nature sees to it that here and there a sycamore seed falls on good ground; and a young sapling lifts its broad palms next year above the spot.

Some people object to sycamores because the leaves as they unfold cast off their fuzzy covering of branched hairs, which are irritating to the mucous membrane of the eyes and throat. Most of us have never heard of this trouble before, and have lived comfortably in the neighbourhood of sycamore trees for years. Happily, this moulting period of the leaves is very brief. A more serious obstacle to the planting of these trees is their susceptibility to a fungous disease. The young leaves often look scorched immediately upon opening. A second crop of inferior size and vigour may replace them. Examine an affected leaf, and you find black specks along the veins. These are the outward signs of inward trouble, which is too deep-seated to be reached by any fungicidal spray. Let us hope that time will show a cure, for the sycamore is one of the trees that grows rapidly and flourishes amid the dust and smoke of city streets. How few kinds of trees there are, after all, that stand by to shelter and encourage city-bound humanity through the hot summer days, making fresh green oases in burning brick-and-mortar deserts!

The California Sycamore (P. racemosa, Nutt.) bears its button balls in a series of four to six strung on the tough, fibrous stem. The leaves have the same general outline as those of its Eastern relative, but the lobes are slenderly triangular, and deeply cleft by sinuses of about the same size and shape. This beautiful Western tree was long confused with P. occidentalis, for its bark is white, and in habit and size the two are similar. A comparison of the leaf and the fruit easily enables one to distinguish them.

The Arizona Sycamore (P. Wrightii, Wats.) is a sycamore which looks like P. racemosa in fruit and leaf, but the lobes of the latter are much more finger-like, and measure often 8 to 10 inches in length. These trees are strikingly beautiful objects, growing to large size on canon sides and stream borders, rising far above the evergreen oaks and pines of the semi-arid regions, each tree a refreshing dash of verdure in a weary land.

The Oriental Plane Tree (P. orientalis, Linn.) is the species best known in Europe, and is coming to be very popular in this country. It is a shapelier tree than our own, more compact in habit, with larger leaves, and three or four seed balls are strung on each long stem. So far it seems almost immune to fungous diseases, a very important consideration to the planter. This is the plane tree of the Greek writers, in groves of which Plato walked and discoursed--a tree held in worshipful esteem by the ancients for its stateliness and beauty. On occasions they poured wine upon its roots and decked its limbs with jewels and gold. Xerxes halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction the beauty of a single tree. He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him to remember it the rest of his life. Xerxes never did things by halves.

Certain venerable plane trees in Europe are estimated to be 4,000 years old. Very few species of trees attain a greater age. These patriarchs are giants as well. They measure as much as 40 feet in trunk diameter, though they are so perforated by decay that counting rings is impracticable even when the tree falls. These old trees are at best but shattered ruins, supported in their senile age by columns and braces--melancholy figures, indeed, renewing feebly each spring by their few leaves the youth they had spent and quite forgotten centuries before the dawn of civilisation. It is almost pitiful that they should live on.